Various literary magazines for women started appearing in the late 18th century in German-speaking countries, at least ten of them written and published solely by women. By going public in this way, these authors were flying in the face of the widely held late-Enlightenment tenet that a "woman's place is in the home". This study is the first to tell us who these women were, how they justified their actions in their magazines, what conditions they published their periodicals under, what they had to say and how their women readers responded.